electronics

I recently decided to make the switch to LiFeP04 for the second battery in the cruiser and eventually settled on a Victron Orion-tr Smart 12/12-18 to charge it.

While capacity testing the new battery on the bench I used a mess of random wire I had sitting around. Queue disaster. With my thinking obscured by the fog of a bad headache, I reversed the polarity when reconnecting the setup. The protection on the BMS kicked in, but not before the Victron was damaged.

Numerous posts detail internal protections that are not user-servicable, and Victron specifically list in their warranty that reverse polarity is not something that’s covered. So with nothing to loose I figured I’d crack it open.

After much work with the heat gun, I’d exposed a very well potted PCB with some large components. I started removing the potting looking for any obvious sign of damage. Pretty quickly (but not before removing way more of the potting than needed), I noticed this damaged track.

So the PCB track is the fuse…

Operation was restored by bridging the track with some solder.

Interesting note is there is a VE.Direct port and it is operational - output was showing in PuTTY and the VictronConnect application connected without issue.

Would I buy another Orion-Tr? No. Victron should do more to prevent people like me from destroying their shiny new toys so easily. I better be careful not to connect it in reverse again…